Out with the old!

Since our home went unloved for many years before we moved in, the hedge in front of the house became overgrown.  Texas sage is a beautiful plant, but if it isn't pruned regularly, it becomes more of an eyesore than anything.  Our hedge was huge and lopsided.  It looked disproportionate to our entryway, but because it hadn't been trimmed much before, the insides of the bushes were brown and didn't have any leaves.  Once a texas sage bush gets overgrown it's all but impossible to trim it back, so we decided that it had to go.  We also used that opportunity to take out a few more creosotes!

Before:

After:

See the problem?

No?

Let's look closer...

Yeah.  That's the spot that the painters missed on our house.  Apparently when they repainted just before we moved in, they thought it was a good idea to paint AROUND the hedge??  Now that our hedge is gone, we're left with a big white spot on the main column right next to our front door!!  Eek!  And that's not the only spot:

There's THAT one. And many more!  Since they also "forgot" to paint our fence, I guess we know what we'll be doing this spring!

HOW cold is it?!?

25 degrees.  Yes, that's right...in Phoenix!  With temps dropping below freezing this year, we've had to cover all our cacti at night for the last week or so.  It looks pretty ridiculous to have a yard covered in blankets and towels, but hopefully it will pay off when they all survive to spring!  (pictures of that to follow soon!)

Despite the death threat that faces most of our desert native plants, we had a little surprise in our backyard a few nights back.  A mystery plant that, until now, was just a group of little green nubs surprised us by throwing out a beautiful little flower!

What a nice little winter surpise :)

Bathroom Redo! (Before & During)

Sorry, no "after" pictures yet. :)  After getting a little restless and anxious to do some more decorating, I decided to take on the 2nd bathroom!  We're not sure what we want to do with the master bath yet, and since we have guests coming to visit in a few months this is a great room to warm up!

Before:

Don't get me wrong...I think the yellow looks nice in there.  But....it also looks nice in every other room in the house!  It's a great color and I'm sure that's why the previous owner chose it, but I'm getting a little yellowed out about now.  This particular bathroom only has one tiny little window and tends to be a bit dark and cave-like, so I decided it needed to be lightened up a little to make it more inviting.

I chose Glidden's "Natural Wicker" as a medium beige but it ended up being more of a light beige.  Still nice, but the room will definitely need some colorful accessories!  The new paint (We'll call this the "during") :

After putting all the hardware and switchplates back on the walls, I realized that those would be 2 very easy ways to give this room a new look.  So I added these:

...and then I covered the switch plates with fabric to transform them from this:

....to this:

Love them!  And now I'll be using that fabric as inspiration for the rest of the room!